Short Stories. Photos and pictures. Poems even.

how to save money on car rentals…

My hubby has created a safe and clever car rental system. How to save money. Do not rent at airport but at the closest location to it! We saved over $200 dollars in Arizona by renting in Tempe, $13 taxi ride away from Phoenix airport. Now we were travelling to San Fransisco and even making sure to clean the cookies, the airport was too expensive. Into the saving mode, what is close by? San Bruno.

So into the taxi we climb. How much? $15, but why do you want to go to San Bruno? I could drop you off at the next terminal for $8 and you could take the shuttle. No, there is no shuttle. Yes, there is. No, there is none to San Bruno. What do you want to do? How about driving us to San Bruno, we are already in your car!

Conversations during the ride go as usual. So where you from? Are you Greek? Nope. German? Nope. Finland. Aah, he knows about it, cold snowy country. I know where you’re from, Nicaragua! Nooo 🙂 But his Father went there recently. (Sucks, I was wrong, everybody get a T-shirt or a cap as souvenir.) He is from Yemen. Really, I don’t know anyone from there, really! He drops us off at car rental.

Well, they don’t have cars available! Even we have a reservations. They offer an upgrade to SUV. No, thanks we don’t need the gas guzzler. Convertible maybe? Nobody who was supposed drop their car off this morning haven’t showed up yet. So we wait for a while, small-talking. We find out that our last night’s hotel is a few blocks away, so we could drop the car easily, walk back to hotel, sleep well, no hurry. They have a courtesy service to local hotels, and hotel has a complimentary taxi service to airport. Works. Well planned, hubby!

We are a little tired and lot hungry. Six hours of transcontinental flight behind us, no food service. Great! How about we have a bite to eat while waiting, a friendly man from the rental suggests. He takes us to an eatery down the block, introduces us to Mike at Senior’s Pizza. Mike makes New York-style pizza, mushrooms and ham. Delicious! I have Coke zero, the straw sticking out of the bottle. Sure, the jacket sleeve gets caught on it and it all pours down and my khakis, table, two chairs, floor. I have to go ask for help. Next to the kitchen door is a sign “clothing optional beyond this point ” I do not dare to knock! I wait. Mike does not mind the mess, he is very friendly and I have to tip some extra, of course.

Back to the enterprising car rental station. No cars yet. An Indian family of four is waiting. Now, they don’t want the SUV either. Waiting. The agent is busy trying to locate a vehicle, and finds one. In an other location. He needs to get a driver to take us there. The location turns out to be in a complete opposite way for us to go, but hey, we are still saving money. They upgrade us to and full size, Chevy Impala, with a appropriate license plate for New Yorkers:

The agent says, the tank is half full, return it half full. Hubby notices that the tanks is quarter full. Ok, quarter. I notice the car has not been cleaned up. OK, return it empty. Off we go. We spend slightly over two hours with this all, but hey, we did save $225! By the way, they did not have car available upon return to take hubby back to hotel. So he walks the few blocks, no big deal.